Alien Symbols
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Based on the "Tin Star" series by Cecil Castellucci. Tournour asks Tula about the name of the Tin Star Cafe.


Alien Symbols

By Laura Schiller

Based on: _Tin Star/Stone in the Sky_

Copyright: Cecil Castellucci

The opening party of the Tin Star Café was in full swing.

Constable Tournour watched from his seat at the bar as Tula Bane circulated expertly through the crowd. She had a smile (or its cultural equivalent) for all her customers; she kept their drinks topped up, their plates full, and could stop a potential argument before it happened, with a well-placed joke or a warning look.

She caught him watching her, and smiled at him over the heads of a noisy crew of Hort. Setting down the bowl of grubs she'd brought them, she made her way over to the bar and leaned against the counter next to his seat.

"Hello, Constable. What brings you here? I didn't peg you for a party person."

"I'm simply making sure this party doesn't get out of hand."

"Of course." He was pretty sure she was being ironic, since she knew perfectly well why he was here. "Something to drink?"

She slipped behind the counter and took out a bottle of Loor water. He took out his currency chit, which she waved away. "It's on the house."

Tournour wasn't sure he approved of that. Part of him wanted to stay out of Tula's barter system. If she did him a kindness, he would have liked to know she was doing it for him, not in anticipation of some rule he might bend or some crime he might overlook for her as the station's constable. On the other hand, it was too late to stop trading with her now, since he'd been doing it since well before he fell in love with her. He was realistic enough to know that, for a constable, having connections to the black market could be very useful.

Besides, Tula wouldn't be Tula without her business sense.

He dipped his antennae at her in gratitude and took a sip of his water. It was chilled and sparkling, just the way he liked it. She'd remembered.

"Congratulations," he said. "This place is thriving."

"Thank you."

"You look beautiful."

Outwardly, she was almost unrecognizable as the lost soul who had slept in a bin in the station's underguts. Respectability suited her. She wore a silvery gray dress, sleeveless and high-collared, which shimmered like moonlight against her brown skin. On her head, she wore a pair of silver jewels connected by a chain. Originally meant to decorate a Loor woman's antennae, they had been repurposed as clips to hold her curly black hair out of her face.

"Did you know those jewels are traditionally worn to symbolize a bonding?"

"Oh, these?" She touched the jewels lightly and moved her head, making them glitter. "I had no idea. I got them in a trade."

When Humans blushed, he had learned, not only their triangles changed color. Their entire faces did. He watched a tinge of pink wash over her cheeks like sunlight over a planet. It wasn't often, these days, that someone could catch her out in a cultural misstep. No wonder she was embarrassed.

She wasn't his mate. She could never love him the way she'd loved Reza. Tournour had accepted that long ago; he didn't have much choice in the matter. His body was attuned to hers, alien or not. When she was upset, he could no more stop the calm from building up than he could stop breathing.

But she would never knowingly wear bonding-jewels for him. So why would he be foolish enough to hope for it?

But he had always been a fool when it came to Tula.

A Loor woman would have sensed the change of his energy vibrating in the air and said something to reassure, or at least clarify. If she were his mate, she would have breathed out calm, so that whatever disagreement they had could be resolved with logic. Tula could not do either, but her Human intuition told her just as surely that something was wrong.

"Excuse me," she said, smiling a little too brightly and avoiding his eyes. "I think I forgot something in the storage room."

She disappeared behind a beaded curtain.

Tournour swirled the water in the bottle, watching the bubbles burst and trying to keep his face impassive. He'd known from the moment she'd first walked into his office that she would cause trouble. His family had warned him that some Humans used their biological compatibility to exploit the Loor, especially those like him, whose sympathy with aliens made them easy targets. That was the reason they had exiled him.

But instead of a confident seductress, the first Human he met had been a young girl as lost, alone and frightened as himself. Not to care, not to help, not to admire her in her stubborn fight for survival, had proved impossible. By the time he realized she was using him after all, he'd been in too deep to stop.

His antennae shot up in surprise as Tula emerged from behind the curtain, beckoning to him.

"I've got some heavy crates back here," she said in a loud, casual voice, the kind meant to be overheard. "Could you help me, please?"

"Certainly."

But he had the feeling she didn't need him to carry anything, and he was right. Once they were alone in the storage room, away from the prying eyes of her customers and his junior officers, she took a small black box out of one of the crates and opened it with a flourish.

"A gift," she said. "To thank you for helping me set up this place. I could never have come this far without you."

It was a pin in the shape of a five-pointed star, the same symbol painted on the sign of her café. It was no bigger than a thumbnail, just small enough for him to wear on his uniform without breaking regulations.

"Thank you," he said. "Does it have a particular meaning?"

"It does, actually." Was it a trick of the light, or was she blushing again? "It was a symbol to my people, a long time ago, back when we hadn't even finished colonizing our own planet, let alone any others. In a wild frontier town, the local lawkeepers could be all that stood between order and anarchy. They used to wear these."

She brushed her hand lightly over the little star.

"The _Prairie Rose_ was shaped like this too," she added. "From a certain angle. It looked like this when I saw it fly away."

He could sense her grief lying heavy on the air. He concentrated on holding back his pheromones; he knew how she disliked being calmed without her permission.

As he stood still for her to pin the star to his chest, however, her vibrations lightened. She took rather longer about it than necessary, smoothing the fabric of his jacket, with a tuck here and an adjustment there, leaving warm trails across his chest with her fingers. Whether the gesture was meant to make her feel better or just to hide her face, it accomplished both.

Looking down at the top of her curly head, he got a close look at her Loor bonding-jewels and couldn't believe his eyes.

Someone, either Tula herself or her trading partner, had engraved a tiny five-pointed star on each one.

They matched.

When she stepped back to admire the effect, she was smiling.

He squinted down at the star and, belatedly, realized the full impact of what she had been trying to say.

Tula Bane was an intensely private woman. She could talk a Brahar out of fighting and a Hort into sharing his grubs, but she never talked about herself if she could help it. Tournour understood that; they were very much alike that way. They were both exiled from their species, slow to trust, and having been on opposite sides of the law for so long didn't help. He had gotten into the habit of showing his love in roundabout ways, saying one thing and doing another, half afraid she would never find out, half praying that she would. So now it was her turn to do the same thing.

She wasn't using him. She was making a trade. Since he had given her his heart, she was repaying him to the best of her ability.

It was the best deal he had ever made.

He reached over and adjusted her hairclips, letting her know without words that he had seen them.

"The Tin Star Café," he said, "Is an excellent name. Long may it prosper."

Remembering all he'd learned about Human courtship, he leaned down to kiss her.

She wrapped her arms around him and released a sweet, musky scent, one he recognized as Human arousal. She had smelled like that when accompanied by Reza, a few times. Part of him took a primal satisfaction in knowing that he, too, could have this effect on her. The rest of him was too distracted by her warmth and softness, the little sounds she made, and that scent, to think straight.

"Now get out of here, Constable," she said, smiling, "Before my guests think we're up to something."

"As you wish."

She closed one bright brown eye and opened it again, the Human equivalent of fluttering her antennae. Then she shoved a six-pack of bottles at him, not forgetting their alibi, and hustled him back through the curtain.


End file.
